Amazon News: FBA Fee Creep, Title Wars, and TikTok Trouble

Amazon News: FBA Fee Creep, Title Wars, and TikTok Trouble Unknown Speaker: Welcome, fellow entrepreneurs, to the Amazon Sellers School podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle and anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Speaker 3: All right. Welcome to the next episode of Amazon Seller News Live. Today, I am your host. It will not be Todd. Todd is moving either his house, his warehouse or both. He had a baby and is going to jail or something like that. I don't know what's going on. He's moving a whole bunch of stuff. He's not actually going to jail. But I get to say things about him because he made me the host this week. So we have returning guests, Neil Robson from PPC Ninja and Robin Johnson from Marketplace Blueprint. So welcome back, you guys. Good to have you again. Speaker 1: It's like the inmates took over the prison and her dad's out of town and the teenagers get to run the show today, huh? It'll be a fun one. Speaker 3: Yeah, we're gonna throw a rager online. It's gonna be back like back in the 2021 days of COVID. What was that? What was the... The tool, that app we all used for huge rooms of people. Speaker 1: It wasn't Skype, was it? Skype? Speaker 3: No, it wasn't Skype. No, I forgot. Darn it. But you could get a whole bunch of people in there and that was like, you'd get all your friends on and just hang out and talk and stuff like that. But anyhow, I digress. Speaker 2: You don't mean Zoom, do you? Speaker 3: No, it's not Zoom. It's, no, it was something that, it was a flash in the pan. Speaker 1: I know the one you're talking about. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. All right, cool. Well, let's dive straight into the news. We've got some pretty interesting topics to go over. And now, full disclosure for everyone that's live. Feel, number one, this is the first time I've ever used StreamYard as a host, so hopefully I do this right. We're going to find out together because this is Learn How to Swim by Diving In. All right, let's share screen. Let's go to a tab. So our first... What's that? Speaker 1: Nothing, nothing, nothing. Go ahead. Speaker 3: Don't mess me up, man. I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm winging this. All right, cool. So how Amazon's FBA changed the shipping logistics playbook and e-com. I think this one's kind of an obvious one. Oh, this is from Will Hare. He's actually a buddy of mine, the founder of Belovix. That's interesting. So, you know, let's go with, let's see. Speaker 2: And I think that he was right about that because at Prosper, he had organized like a little tour of the FBA warehouses. And so I think this was a result of him going and touring that facility. I've done one in Phoenix. And if you have an opportunity to do it, I highly recommend it. It really helps. Like clarify, like why is Amazon doing some of the things that they do or why does that mistake keep happening over and over again? Once you see the systems and it kind of helps you say, okay, I can see why this doesn't fall, like why the if then statements could cause this thing to happen. Speaker 3: Makes sense. So, so are you saying that you can just organize a tour of a facility? Like anybody? Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't done it in a while. There is a place where you can sign up and you can organize groups. When I went, it was very strict. I think you had to leave your phone behind. But you definitely were not allowed to take any pictures or any videos which is why you very seldom see those unless it's like something like CNBC or something along those signs. And you're very much in a very contained group and you're following all of the rules like when you go up the stairs you have to have the two hands on the rails and all of that stuff. So it's very interesting. Speaker 3: That sounds horrible. Don't hurt yourself, sweetie pie, but okay, cool. Well, so I know having been there, I think all three of us actually have been there through the transition of Amazon, what we thought was a products A place to sell products, Amazon really was actually a distribution and logistics company. So I think they did something along the lines of what Southwest did, Southwest Airlines, where they could have cheaper flights because they mastered logistics of baggage and stuff like that, and they were able to drive the prices down due to efficiency. Amazon is definitely no different in this. The article goes over, and I think I'll actually just stop sharing it for right now so you can see us, but the article goes over that they've mastered technology and robots, and with AI coming in place, it all makes sense that things get more and more and more efficient. If you can remove the human element, you quite Honestly, remove a lot of mistake potential, you remove feelings, you remove contention, a whole bunch of malarkey that comes with the human element, right? So what are you guys' thoughts on what Amazon is doing with this and where do you think it's going to go? Speaker 1: So mind if I go first? So like it makes total, like, like you said, Amazon started out as a products place. But, you know, with the recent developments we've seen with AWD, with them really getting into their own supply chain. It's no secret that they're moving towards becoming the biggest logistics company in the world, right? They've already got their own supply, they've got their own boats, they've got their own cans, they've got everything they need to streamline their operations. Speaker 3: They've got their own boats and cans? I know they have cans. Speaker 1: I know they bought their own cans. I wouldn't be surprised if they own their own boats, right? Or they own the shipping companies that own those boats, right? They're the trillion dollar giant in the room. So especially with them, the significant investment in AWD, right? And they came out with AWD to very clearly define saying, hey, we're actually coming after the warehousing space with this AWD model, right? They're like, FBA is fulfillment. Right. AWD is storage. And, you know, I think they're just going to continue to grow the AWD side of things because it's storage. It's cheap. Right. Like having stuff sit on the shelves and having robots go pick it whenever it's needed. That's collecting rent for very little work. Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. That's why storage units are such a good investment. So I hear. I don't own any, but you just put a few hundred grand into building some tin cans and then charge people every single month. And then if they don't pay, well, then you get to charge to have someone come and take it away. Speaker 1: And they're continuing to integrate with other platforms as well, right? So it's like you can now have the FBA inventory from Shopify, get fulfilled through the remote fulfillment system. And, you know, I don't want to talk about it, but I mean, TikTok is still that ongoing. Is it banned? Is it not banned? Does the CPP have to divest? Amazon came out as a brand that was interested in purchasing TikTok. And like, I mean, you want to talk about seamless purchase transition. That's the way that's the way it's going. Right. And if Amazon gets their hands on that, then the storage, because TikTok is working on their own system as well. FBT, right. Fulfilled by TikTok. And if they were to merge and, you know, all of a sudden all those resources become available, they'll have the largest warehousing system in the United States and probably the world. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. Go ahead, Robin. Speaker 2: And then, you know, I think that when we're talking about FBA, you know, if you weren't here and when we were doing Merge and Fulfilled, You know, it was just expected that shipping times would be five days. Amazon really changed the game and they took a lot of friction because there was a lot of concern. You know, I won't buy things off Facebook because I know that there's so many scam companies out there, right? So there are so many buyers that will go to Amazon first. At Amazon Accelerate, there was a quote by Doug Carrington that I thought was really great and it kind of really exemplifies how Amazon approaches kind of that customer-centric approach when it comes to logistics. They said, when we speed up deliveries, we sell more. We see on the detail page when an offer has a faster delivery speed, it's going to get a higher conversion rate, more sales per glance view. But what's even more interesting is that customers who experience those faster delivery speeds come back sooner and shop more. I remember back in the day, you would just ship to the closest warehouse. Then that really caused them to say, okay, we need to have this inventory spread out. They've played with multiple iterations, much to our chagrin at times, with that. Then EWD, Buy with Prime, all of those things where they're always looking at how can they make sure that they're focusing on that customer-centric. experience and to cause changes in their business model that will help smooth the process for the customer. There could be even some resurgence in Seller Fulfilled Prime with some of the changes with the inventory reimbursement. I think there's a lot to watch when it comes to fulfillment on Amazon. Speaker 1: I agree. If you think about the Q4 that just passed, right? Like they were forcing everyone to go into AWD and AWD was full. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, that's right. Speaker 1: And so then they were hammering sellers with the placement fee because their warehouses were for and like you don't take the placement fee, you don't get your Q4 inventory sold. So it's like what you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. Speaker 3: I know. Yeah. So here's my theory on this because this is what I've seen them do time and time again. So, let's go way back. 2011, I think, or 2012 is when PPC dropped on 3P for Amazon, right? At that time, first of all, if you spent pennies, you made dollars, right? And me, idiot, didn't do that because I was like, I don't need to pay for this. Why would I pay for this? I'm already making the sales. But over the years, it got better and better and more and more expensive. And now, if you don't do ads, you don't make sales. I mean, unless you're me, but I've got a decade old brand on Amazon with brand search, right? So people are searching for the brand, but I don't make sales on keywords. I make sales on brand search. I did a test where on a completely separate Seller Central account, I was not running ads, then I ran ads, then I turned ads off, right? And what happened was, and I did the same thing with Yelp once because I used to do, I did a 12-month study on Yelp. I used to do local SEO for small businesses. You have an organic traffic of X. You turn on Y a hundred percent. Most of the traffic is now, this is what it was with Yelp, is paid traffic. You turn it off, so on for four months, off for four months, on for four months, off for four months, and your organic traffic will drop below what you had before you started ads. And I saw the same thing with Amazon. Once you turn it on, it's like, gotcha sucker, you know, and they're doing the exact same thing with AWD and pretty much every aspect of anything that they go into, right? Hey, Prime members, you get Amazon Prime Video for free. Oh, but now we're actually doing ads. So if you want it for free, but without ads, you have to pay. Hey, Amazon sellers, we now have AWD. You save the placement fee. We won't charge it to you. Congratulations. Oh, by the way, everyone needs to do this. Oh, we don't have room. We're charging a placement fee. Okay, now you're in AWD. Cool. Now we're going to re-implement the placement fee or some other fee. Yeah, exactly. We put in a low inventory fee, the high inventory fee, and the fee fee and the fee FIFO FOM. Now, but you're fully integrated. Who's going to leave AWD because it's more expensive and a bigger pain in the butt to take all that inventory or change up to a 3PL and figure out a whole new relationship than it is to just stay there. So they incentivize you, they lock you in, and literally everything Amazon does is this. AWS, their primary revenue generator, if I'm not mistaken, was really inexpensive and super efficient and blah, blah, blah. Well, now it's not so inexpensive, but you're fully integrated with it. Anyhow, that's enough of that rant. Shall we go on to the next one? Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it. Speaker 3: All right, cool. Okay, so this is a very interesting one. Let me add this back to stage and I will zoom in on this. So, history-making change. Amazon is making a massive structural shift in their page setup, introducing two-part titles. I've always wondered when they were gonna do this. Well, recently. So, part one is a short and clear title, Brand, Product Type, Size, Variation. Part two is a product highlights, features, benefits and advantages. This makes a lot of sense for mobile. So let me read a little bit into this and then let's discuss it. Mobile first era. Why now? 70% of shoppers are doing that on their mobile phones. So you need to have shorter titles. That gets straight to the point. Gen AI ready data. So basically you need to optimize your listings. This is like, for me, this is a bit of a, A Catch-22 because you want to provide data so that when a human reads it, that it gives them all the information. But if you put too much in there, then Rufus or Cosmo is going to get it wrong or potentially get it wrong or acquire data from elsewhere that doesn't deliver exactly what you want to say. And I think that's because these things are still being trained. And so reviews aren't enough. Rufus is absolute garbaggio when it comes to looking at reviews because Amazon and me being in the review removal business for the last almost two years, Amazon focuses on the negative in many cases when it comes to the reviews. And those negative reviews, the ones that they focus on are usually the worst possible reviews with the most alarming data. And most of them are actually, a lot of them are fraudulent reviews. But okay, so let's talk about this. What are your guys' thoughts? And Robin, let's start with you. What do you think about this? Speaker 2: I think this is a little dramatic. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 2: I think that one, this looks like a beta. It's not a full announcement. And we all know that so many betas go to die. Two, this is what should already be doing. This is already the structure that should be in place. You know, I think it's a bigger issue for private labelers who've been relying on keyword stuffing. And now the change in the title policy is impacting them. I think for them, maybe there's like this hope that maybe they can go back. Amazon has no intention of going back. So I don't think that this, I mean, if they implemented this tomorrow and we would take our existing nomenclature that we use for titles across our clients, we would use a simple macro and split it out. It would take us a couple hours to do. So I don't think that this is a game-changing thing. I haven't seen any evidence that people are making millions and millions of dollars selling with Rufus. I asked about 20 of my closest friends, do you ever use Rufus? And they're like, Like, is that like a pet company? What is that? You know, they don't know what Rufus is. And I'm like, a little search, the little AI search. And they're like, Oh, no, I thought that. No, I don't know what that is. I love LinkedIn, it's great, but there's a lot of things that people over-dramatize and I think this is one of them. This partly displays the difference between marketing a private label product and an established brand with brand authority and affinity. We don't rely on these tactics as much with larger brands. So, you know, I think because Amazon already knows what the product is because you're getting conversions off your branding right away. Speaker 3: Yeah. And to back you up on that, as a matter of fact, I fully admit that my listings are trash. They're awful. They're like 1992 listings. But you know what? Speaker 2: There's somebody who can help you fix that. Speaker 3: I can fix it myself. I mean, my wife is the one that does this. She's very good at building listings. Very good. But the reason we don't change them is that our conversion rate is insane. There's no need for us to change and we don't even have the right hero image might change that but you know, but the clientele is looking for that so I If you said that not like bigger brands don't need to use these tactics like I'm almost anti tactics Not I'm not really but if you look at my listening like wow, this is a horrible horrible listing, but it converts like crazy. Speaker 2: Well, I think you have to remember that titles are your ad copy, right? So titles are going to impact click-through rate. So if you're seeing a decline in click-through rate or your click-through rate is below some of your other products, then that can be a sign that it's time to test a new title. However, the biggest thing is making sure that people can identify your product quickly by looking at the main product image and the first couple of words. You're going to have truncation on GalleryView. You're going to have truncation on Google. Amazon spends a lot of money on Google Ads. You want to make sure you're thinking about those just to begin with. Speaker 3: Cool. Neil, thoughts? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mean this doesn't, so Amazon is already actively using Rufus to change listing copy on the platform in a beta, in a closed beta test. I know this for a fact. I've seen negative results from Rufus going in and changing these listings. I've actually seen USPs get cut in half because they didn't accurately transfer the data So, you know, we're talking size-specific requirements. They didn't actually transfer that properly. The AI got it wrong and all of a sudden people are buying the wrong sized item. And that's the fault of the AI. Speaker 3: One little point here, Amazon doesn't admit fault on this. They punish the seller. Speaker 1: So the seller figured out what was going on. If they were logged into Amazon or if they were not logged into Amazon, they would see two different listings, if they were prime or not prime, or incognito or not incognito. I can't remember the details, but they discovered this listing and they talked to seller support and they said, yes, your products are enrolled in a beta test from this date to this date. And we looked at the business reports and we can clearly see the USP fall off a cliff. And then they put together a package that said this beta test is hurting our listings. Remove us from the beta test. And Amazon didn't put up a fight. They just straight up removed them from the beta test because the data was very clear that this test was hurting them as a seller. It doesn't happen often. It took a lot of work for them to be able to get that and figure that out. But, you know, with the shorter titles, I always put myself as an Amazon consumer, right? I'm always a shopper. And my favorite listings are the ones where there is no copy garbage. It's just straight bullet points. This is exactly what it is. Do I need this? Yes or no. Does it have everything I want? Yes or no. And I don't have to read a lot of that fluff, right? I think Amazon is trying to cut out a lot of that fluff and that's another point of this. Like you said, that truncation is important, but at this, you know, bare bones, it's like, whatever I'm looking for, I want to see those four first words in the title. So I know that that product is for me. I click on it. I got condensed bullet points. They match, check the images, matches, easier. Search to Purchase Path, right? And that's probably why Amazon is starting to roll this out, considering the AI is supposed to be learning our products in and out and understanding them with deep knowledge. And, you know, that's still ongoing. But it makes a lot of sense. And like, I'm surprised that they haven't had a two title system for a while. Speaker 3: Before, same here. Yeah. Speaker 1: Especially knowing that 70% of your purchase do happen on mobile. I think I'm an anomaly for an Amazon shopper. I shop on my desktop, I browse on my desktop, and then I make all my purchases on my phone. I email them to my phone and I purchase from my phone. Speaker 3: I would wager. Speaker 2: You email them to your phone? You don't just log on to the app? Speaker 1: No, I don't keep. I don't. Speaker 2: I love anomalies. That's great. Speaker 1: I keep my business computer totally separate from my Amazon life. Speaker 3: Okay, that's fair. Yeah, I mix literally everything in my life into one spot. Keep the government's guessing like what is this guy Amazon? Is he off road? Does he, is he a podcaster? Well, yeah, I'm, I'm with you guys on this and this actually goes into our next topic quite well. Here's the thing a bit of a takeaway. So all three of us on this podcast have been on Amazon I mean we have combined over 30 years of Amazon experience Maybe over 40, huh? I think if not over 40 probably about 40 years Amazon experience just with these three people right here if Todd were here It'd be 50 years. So 15. Yeah, I've got 15 as well. There's 30 right there Neil. I think you're 12, right? Speaker 1: I'm coming up on time. Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay. So 30 years. There's a bit of knowledge here and you know, Amazon and me with my history at being at Managed by Stats. Managed by Stats was bigger than Helium 10 in the early days of Amazon and for actually quite some time, but Helium 10 beat us at marketing. We won't go into that. They're great marketers. So a little bit salty about that. Anyhow, the point is, is that with thousands of customers that Managed by Stats had, we got to see, we could see rollouts of beta tests. Because we had we had about I think you could have a hundred and forty nine users under each. email that they invited as an authorized user to download data. And so, I don't even know how many of those we had, but we could see batches based on those users, what's happening. And Amazon is always testing. They're always testing. Like the whole Jeff Bezos, it's always day one thing. I think they really do encompass that. Now, Who who here believes race raise your hand who believes that amazon has the seller in in their best has the best interest of seller in mind. Unknown Speaker: Hey Amazon sellers, tired of losing money on storage and shipping fees? Well, Amazon Storage Pros is here to take the headache out of logistics. We manage everything from inventory and creating efficient shipping plans to working with 3PLs and Amazon's AWD so that you can focus on growing your business. Start with a free storage cost audit and discover exactly where you're overspending and how to fix it. Don't let logistics eat into your profits. Visit AmazonStoragePros.com. That's AmazonStoragePros.com to get your free storage cost audit and start saving today. And now back to the show. Speaker 2: As a priority or in general? Speaker 3: Take your pick. Speaker 2: I'm going to go like this. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: And I'm not going to go like this. I'm going to, yeah. I think the customer is, I'll let you guess. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. So they care about the money that you give them. And so they always are rolling out stuff. I'll give you a perfect example. Who here, who of the three of you remembers when they rolled out and they beta tested only displaying a single star? Instead of the five stars for the rating. Did either of you see that? Speaker 2: That was a long time ago, wasn't it? Speaker 3: It was over a year ago, maybe two. Okay, so here's what they did. In an effort to kind of even the playing field for all the products on the page, they would display just a single star. And in order to see what the rating was, you had to roll the mouse over that star and then it would pop out with, oh, this is a 4.3. Well, guess what the consumers thought? The consumers thought that all of those were single star products. Therefore, they were absolute garbage and it literally killed companies. So, Amazon's always rolling out this stuff that someone has this very unbright idea to test on these accounts and you could just be the result of that and you'll have no idea why something went, and don't get me wrong, sometimes stuff go up too, but I think that's fairly rare. You know, keep an eye on this stuff. It's a frosty people. Yeah, go ahead, Robin. Speaker 2: I think that Amazon, as long as your interests and Amazon's interests are aligned, they are very vested in trying to help keep partners that are aligned with their interests and provide things. I think that there are, especially the people that work within Amazon. I've worked with product managers. They are very, they do want to help sellers. The higher priority is always gonna help the customer. And, you know, really, sometimes we get a little, like, and yes, sometimes those changes will wipe out something. And I'm not saying that that's good or anything along those lines, but all of those changes are what make the platform what it is, which makes the buying intent so high, the friction so low. I mean, there's no other place in the world where you can go in and say, I don't have to worry about any technical SEO. I don't need to worry about any conversion or attribution. It's all handled for me. And so there, yes, if you are at odds with Amazon's business goals, you better be prepared to be flattened. So I think it's important to be watching these announcements, even if you say, oh, that doesn't apply to me. You should be looking at each announcement and say, oh, this is something that's a priority for Amazon. So when they started to say, you know, UPCs, oh, recalls, oh, they're really starting to be concerned about compliance. I need to make sure that I have my stuff together in the area of compliance because this policy might not affect me, but the next one might. So I need to get my house in order. Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's always a little easier to get it done when you're on the cusp of this release that you get a little better support from Amazon. So when they announced SPP, I immediately jumped on that and I'm done. I'm through and I'm approved and I've got SPAPI and all that stuff. Well said, Robin. Maybe I'm a little bit jaded because I just see that the majority of the beta tests that roll out to accounts negatively impact in some way. But I guess you got to test to test to figure it out. Speaker 2: And I've just had the really great privilege of working with some people that work at Amazon, and they're extraordinary people. Agreed. And there's a lot of things that have happened in the last couple of years that have made the platform a lot better. So even little things like prime exclusive deals, there's all sorts of beta tests that have been successful. I think the frequently returned badges, while it has destroyed some sellers, For people that have a high quality product, it has helped them be able to get the visibility and be able to demonstrate that the product is the higher quality that it is. I think that from a customer-centric place, it works. For trying to help brands that are providing quality products, it's helpful. Speaker 3: Yeah. I agree with that. You know, if they rolled that out ad hoc, not ad hoc, but across the entire platform, well, what would happen to literally every apparel brand on Amazon? They would all have that nasty badge. Speaker 2: They adjust it for category. So the category expectations for soft goods are different than hard goods. Speaker 3: Right. And so that's the right way to go. I've seen them not do that in the past. That's what I'm getting at. But listen, I've had a lot. Well, Robin, I mean, you deal with this crap all the time. Speaker 2: You want to have fun? Trying to explain to a government-held company that somebody, one of their employees needs to provide their personal bank account and driver's license for the INFORM Act. That was not a fun call. I did not enjoy that call. I spent a lot of time apologizing and saying, I just want to remind you that this was not my policy, that I didn't have any control over this. I'm just here to help guide you through it. Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be like if the FDA was releasing some topical something or other and then Amazon said, well, you need FDA approval for that. And the FDA said, well, no, we don't. We're the FDA. We made this and we don't require that. Like, oh, well, we're Amazon. We require it. How would that go? Speaker 2: Yeah, because we have told past companies that we work with and some of them are like, there are places that I haven't seen policies that people, companies that are kind of on the fringe where it could impact them in interesting ways. Speaker 3: Yeah. One that I saw was for chemical testing, Amazon required you to use a certain company And let's say the cost was $2,000, right? So it was all paid and done within Amazon so that they could track it. And the responses from that company went directly within Amazon's portal. So there was no like, oh, the customer doctored this up or whatever. Now, if you went to that company directly, it was literally half the price. But Amazon doesn't allow that. So they got to make their 50 or 80 or 90 or 120% cut their Amazon duties. All right, cool. Speaker 1: The cost of the platform. Speaker 3: Yeah. For all my ranting, complaints and everything, it's still the best platform out there if you don't want to have to build a business from scratch and generate your own traffic and all that stuff. No question about it. And my saltiness is the cost of doing business with Amazon, but I've been doing it for a decade and a half because it still works. All right, let's get on to the next subject. So this is an interesting one and it doesn't surprise me. So let me go over here. All right, so this is from Vanessa Hung and here's the interesting part. A seller recently received an unusually candid message from Amazon support. It stated clearly that Amazon's system had stored data pulled directly from the brand's website and that the data was the reason for a recurring compliance flag on an ASIN. So, without getting into the details on this, we already know that Amazon is looking at what you're selling the product, what the product price is on your own website and they're under the gun for enforcing or being a monopoly and saying, hey, you can't sell it different anywhere else and let's hope that changes. They all have recently implemented the ability for you to buy products on Amazon that full that are purchased and fulfilled from The brand website if it's not actually sold on Amazon. I have you guys seen that one yet? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so Amazon I I can't remember the name of the of the Thing that Whatever it is, but within the app, you can search for a product that's not on Amazon or actually through Rufus is how I did this. Search for a product that's not on Amazon. And if Amazon has enrolled that brand, they'll actually do everything straight through there. But if you do a return or anything like that, you deal directly with the vendor and through their website. So this news doesn't actually surprise me. And the way that I see this going is that if you want to optimize Amazon, you have to now optimize off Amazon as well. And this is just like what I used to do in the local search SEO game, is that I took whatever was on the website, as long as that data was accurate, and I duplicated that data to match exactly across every possible local search engine out there. With links, the times, the keywords, everything. And there was not a single client that I didn't get on the first page of Google for their primary, for the most competitive keywords because they had a better web of exact results. So Amazon is doing the same thing. That's what this means to me is you now have another opportunity to make sure that you are really, really well set up and all your keywords and everything are set up perfectly. Neil, thoughts on that? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I have some clients that they would fall into the compliance side of things where Amazon's language on the platform can be very, very strict. I'm thinking the pesticides one pops up. Claims is the other one that pops up, where, you know, it's like this product gives you a health benefit, but it can't be scientifically proven, so you can't make that claim. Whereas on your website, on your personal D2C website, you can say whatever you want, right? And to me, it sounds like Amazon is going to start scraping that information And now you're going to be forced into using the same language on Amazon, onto your D2C site where you should have full control. But now you're going to be forced to use this language that doesn't align with your brand because it doesn't fall within Amazon's idea of how we sell these products, right? And so having a suppression there because you're marketing differently on your own platform, I understand it, but at the same time, I don't think I really agree with it simply because, you know, we're already playing with it. We're on Amazon's platform, so we have to play within Amazon's rules and that's fine. But we also took the time to set up our own D2C shop and, you know, we're allowed to say whatever we want on those D2C sites, right? Speaker 3: Within the limits of the law, but yeah. Speaker 1: Right, right, right. But I mean, like, they're going to be going deep into semantics where it's like, this specific keyword was found on your website. Therefore, we're trashing your listing on Amazon until you figure out that your D2C site is causing the suppression on Amazon, right? Like that's a little, you know, like when we see suppressions happen on Amazon, sometimes they're like a needle in a haystack. Like we don't know exactly what caused that suppression. And now all of a sudden you're bringing it over to the D2C world. So it's like, okay, well, where is this suppression actually happening? Is there a way for me to determine What platform it's coming from? Is it coming from IDTC? Or do I have to rip apart everything and be like, okay, well, what did my SEO agency change in the last few days? Or what kind of tests happened on Amazon that flagged this, right? It can open up a massive, like, we all know that BIPOC suppression happens because of price changing. And that's a very easy one to be able to troubleshoot, right? You go to the website, you go to the website. And there's the discrepancy, right? And it's very easy to identify. But now if we're going into like, It's hard to know Amazon compliance documents about what keywords are allowed, what keywords aren't allowed, what statements are allowed, what's not allowed. All of a sudden, it becomes a much harder environment for the seller to operate in and I don't know if I necessarily agree with that as much. Speaker 2: So we actually handle compliance for our brands. That's part of our full service, part of our agency. And I can tell you exactly why this is happening. We had a brand that won. So first off, remember when I said earlier, you have to look. So Amazon has told us time and time through these. Different policies that they're going to be getting stricter about compliance. So first it was really easy things and the titles and bullets. And then they started to say, it doesn't matter if you change title and bullets. If it's in the image of your, if it's on the product packaging, now we're holding you to that piece. So we had a brand that had a children's product and they had been selling that children's product for 10 years. But that was the only product they had. They were kind of like a PL brand that grew. And, you know, they didn't have CPSCs. And so when this started to come down, Child Safety Certificates, basically the testing for like leads and phthalates and all of that. And so the product was for a seventh grader. It was a STEM product. I'm sorry, not a 7th grader, a 7-year-old. All the pictures were kids of 7-year-olds. They wanted us to change the title and bullets and then it came down to the appropriate age level was starting to trigger CPSCs. And so they're like, well, let's pretend that it's just for kids 15 and over. And we said, no, because there's a reason why you need that certificate. You know, that's not going to be what's accurate. So what's happening is people are saying, oh, I can't say pesticide here. Well, I'm going to market it on TikTok as a pesticide. And then on Amazon, I'm just going to say, or I'm going to say that it's hemp when it's really cannabis. Those kinds of things that puts Amazon at legal liability. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: So, you know, and the thing is, is that Amazon is stricter than the law in many cases. The question is, will they hold the D to C sites to the level of strictness that they hold on the listings or are they going to focus on the legal quality, like the legal measure of the law on the D to C sites? But I think it does come down to product safety. Now that they know that they're going to be held liable, I think that they really care a lot more about compliance. We had a company that they went out of business because They were skin bleaching and Amazon changed the policy on skin bleaching and they're like, can we get around this? And I was like, you know, even if you could get around it, you know, as soon as you start to get some success, you could have the rug pulled out from you. So it's really better for you to focus on a channel that you're not going to have to wake up every morning hoping that you're still alive. You know, so I think that this kind of goes back also to it. You have to make sure your interests and Amazon's interests are aligned. If you're creating products, they could put them at legal liability. You need to be prepared to be stomped. Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think in our time, we have seen a massive amount of absolute garbage products being sold. So I, for one, am for stricter rules on getting products up there, especially when it comes to children. Like, uh, uh, Neil, you're, you're fairly young. So, um, you know, but, There was a time where that lead paint was used on children's cribs and then the children would gnaw on the cribs and they get lead poisoning and then go insane. Speaker 2: I've also seen how my teenagers buy products and they'll be like, it says it brings me the moon on a silver platter. If you have young people, you need to teach them how to read reviews. I think that it's really, as a parent and as a pet parent, I want to make sure that Amazon does have these compliance because that's how dogs die from Chinese treats that were made with bad materials. That's how people end up with horrible rashes. That's how people's houses were burned down. What were they called? Not the hoverboards. Speaker 3: I think they actually did call it a hoverboard. Speaker 2: They were hoverboards, yeah. Yeah, because people weren't following the compliance on the electrical side. I like my house. I would like it not to be burned down. And part of the platform working is that people trust that the platform is safe. Speaker 3: Yeah, a funny story. When I was in China last, There were battery banks given out as like, hey, welcome, thank you. And one of the people in the group, their battery banks set on fire in the hotel room while they were sleeping. So had that not been on the side table and just been thrown into their luggage or something like that, I mean, literally they could be unable to get out of the room, burned alive, in a hotel, mind you, right? So it's like, I reiterate, I am 100% for stricter compliance because those of us that have legit products, we're truly trying to bring something that solves a need to the world and we're not shysters. That moat that having to go through that slog is going to eliminate a lot of people that are fly by night. They don't care about other human beings. They don't care about the results. They just care about the money. I want those people out. Speaker 1: 100% agree. Like where I was thinking when I was arguing for against this is the holistic side of things, right? Where there is like the natural path and there are those people who will believe in different paths to, you know, curing things or things like that, right? There is that there. And you can't necessarily make Those claims on Amazon, but on your DTC site or on your TikTok or whatever. Speaker 3: Yeah, like healing crystals. Speaker 1: That's, that's the exact space I was thinking of that. So electromagnetic. Speaker 2: They are regulated by FDA for health claims there. So they can, there's things that they can say and there's things that they cannot say. And there, you know, there are brands that are definitely, you know, trying, like you can't say a healing crystal cures cancer. That's not allowed by the letter of the law anywhere. Speaker 3: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Speaker 1: I'm thinking of, um, Electromagnetic, like EMF blockers, right, where it blocks the harmful magnetic rays that come from our electronics, right? And I know Amazon is strict on that one. But on a D2C site, it's like, wow, there are those testers out there and you can measure it, but it kind of falls into a shade of gray where Amazon is being a little stricter on the regulatory compliance side. Speaker 3: The only way that I'm aware of, and I'm not a scientist or a rocket surgeon, but the only way that I know how to fully block all EMF is to build a Faraday cage. Speaker 1: Or turn it off. Speaker 3: What I'm saying is in the world we live in, I'm in a complex where you can find 50 different 5G. Those are radio waves going through the air. If I didn't want that going through my brain and my eyeballs and stuff like that, I would have to build a Faraday cage in my room to absorb and redirect all of that EMF. Anyhow, so these phone cases, these little things you stick on the back of your phone, it's like, oh my God, it blocks everything. I'm like, cool, but how is the signal still getting through? Whoa, amazing. All right, anything else on that, Neil? Cool, cool. All right, let's move on to the next one. So this is an interesting one. This one, I don't fully agree with it, but let's talk about it. So this is TikTok versus Amazon. So this is from Riverbank Consulting, friends of mine for many, many, many years. So it basically says, It's it's quite lengthy it says that tick tock could be pulling sales away from amazon and. Is it helping or hurting? Now, I want to know, Robin, what are your thoughts on this? Because you see this a lot more from an overall viewpoint. Because I've only heard of Amazon products increasing in sales if they are going viral on TikTok. Speaker 2: I think what she's saying is that sometimes the way that a TikTok strategy might work might violate the community rules for reviews or it might flag something as a potential issue for reviews. So we actually had this, somebody hired a new agency and they're like, we're going to have the TikTok agency. And I said, I think it would be great if we could meet with them first. If not, let me give you a couple of things. One, you can't ask for, you know, you can't offer the influencers a refund. We don't wanna use like a super URL, even though the super URLs aren't as big of a deal, Amazon sees a ton of traffic coming in from a specific URL. Search and buy is better than, so we wanna think about how those things are happening so we don't accidentally raise things. But these things like reviews showing up before a product's delivered, that does indicate that something, they're doing something shady, right? Because most people will not leave a review until they use the product. So what it sounds like is people have hired TikTok agencies that are using kind of black hat tactics, not realizing that Amazon will identify those. And in general, honestly, if you're going to be driving a viral TikTok, you would want to do that to your own website because you're not paying the Amazon fees. So it's pretty rare for a large brand to do this, you know, because we really, with a large brand, we don't have to kind of use external traffic to drive the rankings because they have that brand authority already. There are times where brands do want to do it or maybe they haven't built out their D to C side yet. We just need to be really careful in the way that we're building that and the way that the strategy is being executed. We'll usually ask if we can have the opportunity to review it or to talk with the agency. We have a couple of places. You know that we can kind of go back and forth and make sure everything's going to not cause damage to the brand. Speaker 3: Fair point. You know, I have to retract my earlier statement because I actually So, full disclosure with everyone, when I found out that I was hosting this one, I hadn't had a chance to go and read everything in depth. I missed that this was fully about review manipulation. I just scanned it. So, in that, I retract my earlier statement and I fully agree with you on that, especially since I'm in the review game, not acquiring five-star reviews. It's actually a service I refuse to offer, even though I technically could. Review manipulation is huge. And let's not forget people that Amazon has partnered with TikTok. So they are sharing data. So, yeah, Neil, go for it. Speaker 1: One other point I'd like to add is with those five-star reviews, it actually goes both ways, right? And Dan, you and I, I just referred, I made an introduction to you where one of my clients, they went and had a viral TikTok video. And results varied on the, you know, just because it went fantastic on the viral video doesn't mean that those results will be replicated over and over and over again. And they ended up getting slammed with 21 star reviews in a row. And it looked like it actually looked like a malicious attack. And then I started reading through the reviews and it said, oh, it didn't work like the TikTok video said, right. And it can go So that's also another side of things where it's like, well, yes, you can get this influx of positive reviews, but if it's a flash in the pan, And it doesn't go the way you want. It can go to the negative as well. Speaker 3: Absolutely. And look, if I fully support a product that needs one star reviews, I support them getting one star reviews. You know, I have actually not that often, but just two, three times had companies come to me and be like, hey, you know, we we've got a whole bunch of one star reviews that we need removed. I'm like, OK, let's take a look. And I take a look and I'm like, these one stars are legit. Your product's shit. And I'm like, I'm not taking you on as a customer, you know, just because your product is crap. Speaker 2: Just because a video is successful doesn't mean the product behind it is successful. When we have a new client that's new to Amazon, even if they already have established DTC or even retail sales, we will say don't do Amazon Vine until we get at least three to five reviews so we can make sure the messaging matches what people's expectations are because we can't remove those Vine customers. They're great when they're positive, but they're life-ending when they're negative. So, you know, I think it's just kind of the same thing. This would be another reason why you wouldn't want to drive. that video traffic to Amazon because you can't pull back those things. You could decide not to show any of the reviews on your website or there's things that you can try to say, okay, we've made changes to the product here. But once those Amazon reviews are there, they're there. But even if you drive to your own D2C site, people will still buy on Amazon and if that video is not representative of your product, you could still have an issue. Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, to be perfectly honest, well, I guess if someone's video goes viral on TikTok and people start buying, it's possible that it could be completely disconnected from the brand entirely, right? And then people go buy it and someone made false claims. And you're like, I don't know who that is. I wondered why my sales went up and why my reviews did this or that, you know. But I, historically speaking, Amazon may still punish you for that, you know. Speaker 2: I think that's why it's important to make sure you have mentions, you're tracking mentions on social and Google alerts. Because if let's say we had a brand that said somebody made this video and they use one of our products. We actually had a product that was featured in a movie in a negative way. And so we had to make sure that we had adjusted the listing content very quickly to make sure we addressed the negative issue there so that we could avoid things. So if you're being proactive with your brand, you can still avoid those things. And then as soon as you notice, that's a brilliant, chef's kiss, thank you to whoever created Voice of the Customer, we can see things right away. So if you're checking Voice of the Customer a couple times a week, you'll be able to see it before it becomes a major issue. Speaker 3: Yeah, well said. So I told you earlier I just got approved for SPP and so I'll be able to go into the SP API and get the voice of the customer data. That is one of the things that for Catalog Defender that I want to build out a system that is an early warning system for situations just like that. First, I have to figure out what SPAPI even stands for, but that's definitely one of the things I want to go into is the voice of the customer because that's absolutely an early warning system, or it can be. All right, cool. Neil, any further thoughts on it? Speaker 1: Yep, I'm all good. Unknown Speaker: Cool. Speaker 3: Robin, anything else or should we just call it a day? Speaker 2: I think you should call it a day. I heart Todd. You did a great job today. Speaker 3: Thanks. Speaker 2: Or should we do the millennial? Is this the millennial heart? I can't do the millennial. Speaker 1: I'll jump in on that. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 3: This is what I got. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: That's more my style. Speaker 2: Did you do the Gen X one? Speaker 3: There you go. Take that, millennials. Although it's probably millennials that program that in, which I think is sweet. Speaker 2: It is. Speaker 3: But OK, cool. Yeah, let's call it. Now, just so you know, if anyone needs help getting listings fixed or issues, you can reach out to Robin at Marketplace Blueprint. Anyone that needs help with PPC, 100% Neil over at PPC Ninja. And anyone that needs review removal, catalog monitoring, or you just need somebody to talk to for help to find out where to go to get help, you can reach out to me. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for being on the stream. I hope I did a good job for Todd and I'll see you guys. I will not see you. I don't think I'll see you next week. I'll be at Brandon Young's event in Mexico next week. Speaker 2: Have fun. Speaker 3: All right. Bye, everybody. Speaker 2: Hasta luego. Unknown Speaker: This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow Amazon seller. And always remember, success is yours if you take it. Hey, if you made it this far in the show, I really hope you enjoyed it and I'd like to ask you a favor. Could you head on over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a review? It would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to grow the show and offer more episodes for you. Thank you. Speaker 1: God bless and have an awesome day.